I have been trying to install a second hard drive as a slave just to give more space. It is a compaq pc running XP and both the original and the second drives are Seagate drives. The cables and jumpers are correct. Both drives appear as master and slave in the BIOS and both can be seen in the device manager. The drive even shows up in my computer (but with a big red question mark on it).
Each time I start the computer, Windows says it has found the new drive and then I get an error message saying that the device failed to install and might not work properly with the 'data invalid error'.
I tried to access the new drive in disk management to see if I could format it before it disappeared but it vanished before I could do it ...'unexpected error'.
I have tried the tweak UI solution.
I have used seatools.
I have disabled the 1394 network connection.
I have tried the 'invalid data' fix using regedit and changing permissions. I had high hopes for this as I have had the same error message in the past when connecting other USB memory devices, phones etc but this didn't work either?

I am completely out of ideas now (Compaq online chat support isn't working) any help would be appreciated.

Mikeg

12-03-2008 05:11 PM

You sure the drive is good? Can you try it in another system?

lurkswithin

12-05-2008 11:14 AM

I have tried the 'invalid data' fix using regedit and changing permissions. I had high hopes for this as I have had the same error message in the past when connecting other USB memory devices, phones etc but this didn't work either?[COLOR="red"]

Is the slave drive a USB connected drive? With its own power source!

The jumpers are properly set! Are you sure? For a USB drive the jumper should be set to master. There is no Master / slave for USB devices.

Nor are there master/slave settings for SATA drives

Master/slave settings are only listed from within an IEDE BUS contoller .

Has the second drive been formatted or is it brand new?
If it is new you might be having trouble with it because it has not been made active as of yet. The best way to do so is to boot to the seatools disc and let it install and format the drive tha tway!